


Freeze His Brain

by she_is_complicated



Series: Fighters/Lovers [2]
Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, jaylos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 21:19:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11814387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/she_is_complicated/pseuds/she_is_complicated
Summary: It's two in the morning at a 24-hour corner store, and Carlos thinks he's the only shopper. Mal and Evie won't mind if he does his own little rendition of Freeze Your Brain, right? Hey, he deserves it, after his shitty night.Jay doesn't know who that is singing by the slushie machine, but he thinks he's in love.





	Freeze His Brain

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this tumblr post: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f7/2c/0b/f72c0bbc6d01290b35db135bb4a29f3a.jpg - I know it's not exactly the prompt, but I had this idea so I ran with it.

    It was two in the morning, and Carlos was having one shitty night. His paycheck had bounced when he tried to deposit it, the WiFi went down in the apartment for the fourth time that week, and when he tried to give his roommate Ben’s dog, Dude, a bath, the dog decided to scratch him, splash him with dirty water, bark loudly in his ears, and generally be a pain in his ass. Top it off with the empty kitchen cabinets and his empty stomach, and Carlos was having one bad night. It would have been sucky on its own, but with his bad childhood memories pushing themselves to the surface, Carlos felt like curling up in a ball by the stove and crying.  
    Instead, he stood, back painfully straight, like Cruella beat into him with her cane, and marched down to the corner store six blocks away. Evie and Mal were working that night, and a pro of having his best friends work the graveyard shift were that he could visit any time and not be judged for however he appeared: half covered in dirty dog bathwater, eyes betraying him and watering, and wearing pajama pants with little dogs on them. If Carlos entered the corner store looking like crap, at least it would be with the people he loved.  
    “Evie? Mal?” Carlos said tentatively, as the chime on the door announced his presence better than he had.  
    “Carlos? What are you doing here?” Evie stopped wiping down counters and stared at his ragged expression, one that would scream exhaustion if it wasn’t so tired. “Never mind. Did you eat yet?” He lifted a shoulder and dropped it, not even bothering to push back the crinkled white hair covering one of his eyes. “We got a restock of instant ramen. Want me to turn on the electric kettle?”  
    Carlos found enough of his voice to say, “That would be great, thanks.” He then turned down the aisle, picking up a styrofoam container of instant noodles without enthusiasm. It was easy for him, picking out what he needed. For most of his life, he’d removed himself from starvation, just barely, through the help of packs of three noodle dishes, for a mere 99 cents. Getting to pick up an Arizona Iced Tea or an energy drink was just a perk of his independent life. His food funds remained nearly nonexistent, with every dollar of his paycheck going towards savings, and most days his kitchen cabinets only contained a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter.  
    A slushie, maybe that would make his night (or was it morning?) less tragic. He saw the machine and smirked a little bit while he fed in the correct amount of crumpled bills. Carlos punched the button for blue raspberry, and watched with slight reverence as machine shook and made somewhat alarming noises. He saw Mal restocking gum down the aisle, and gave a little wave. She smiled back and went to the front counter, probably to sneak candy bars and kisses from Evie. Carlos looked down the aisle, and felt a sharp knife of fear sink deep into him when he thought he saw the fluff of a fur coat by the mints. It had just been dust bunnies, but it did nothing to prevent the memory that flooded his mind.  
   _“Stupid boy! You didn’t clean my furs!” Cruella screamed, taking her gloves off slowly. Except for the shrieking insults that bit into Carlos’s thirteen year old heart like sharp fangs, she would have appeared the epitome of calm. Her hands didn’t shake, her brow didn’t twitch. Only the flecks of spit that started to coat her cloying red lipstick and the glint in her eyes would have warned of the incoming violence._  
_Carlos shrank down into himself as her long and sharp nails picked up the florescent lighting, casting a menacing glare that nearly matched hers. “Now Carlos, baby, you know what you did wrong?” Her voice turned from crazed with anger to sickly sweet, like the cheap perfume that she seemed to bathe in._  
_“Yes Mother,” Carlos whispered. She didn’t normally permit him to speak, unless he was asked a direct question._  
_“Speak up!” Cruella shouted, dropping her fake kindness like it burned her. She dropped her hand into a slap quickly, and the bright red handprint on his face did nothing to change Carlos’s expression. “What did you do wrong?” He didn’t even begin to open his mouth before her hand swung back, catching the shell of his ear and leaving scratches on his cheek. Nothing that would scar, except for maybe his ear. It was dripping blood onto the linoleum quickly, a red stain that would take ages to scrub away by the time his punishment ended and he’d recovered enough to continue his chores._  
_“Stupid, worthless child! You should have never been born, you little shit!” Cruella’s yelling turned quickly from actual words into just frustrated noises, clearly angry at the lack of reaction Carlos was giving her. Her long and bony legs kicked fast, knocking him flat onto his stomach. The sharp heels she wore ripped old tears wider and new holes into his shirt, and pummeled new bruises onto his back. Carlos barely could let out a gasp when she knocked the wind out of him, aiming straight for his ribcage and leaving a gash that bled much faster than the cut on his ear. She gave a deep grunt, satiated for the moment with the damage she’d left. Her heels stomped out of the room, and a cloud of cigarette smoke wafted through the doorway._  
_Carlos was left on the floor, motionless until he heard the sound of her bedroom door slamming float down the stairs. He curled into fetal position, pressing a hand onto his ribs and letting out a tiny whimper before steeling his spine and mind to get up. The packet of bandages was running low, so normally he would just take a piece of clean-ish cloth to whatever was bleeding, securing it with a piece of duct tape. He inspected the injury on his torso, which was quickly turning his dirty black shirt into a soppy, dripping mess. Carlos peeled the shirt off of him, wincing as it pulled at the edges of the cut. After pressing it to the wound and the blood began to clot, he saw that it was much more tame than he first thought. Carlos was glad for that - the times he had to give himself stitches normally left him with a festering infection wherever the thread traveled. He ripped off part of the hem from a cleaning rag tucked in his back pocket, and pressed it as hard as he dared to his ribs. He’d find the duct tape once his chores were done._  
_If Cruella woke up to un-fluffed furs and a stained tile downstairs, he’d be worse, much worse than a cosmetic injury to the torso and a bleeding ear._  
    Carlos squeezed his eyes closed tighter, then releasing them the same time both hands unclenched his forearms. He looked down, and saw the light spots of blood bubbling to the surface of where his nails pierced the scars that ran across his body. Some were long burns, some were short lines he’d cut himself in an effort to cover the scars of his past and find some sort of release from the depression that seemed to cloud around him like his own personal storm cloud. The one he hated most he couldn’t see, and therefore couldn’t cover with his own self-inflicted pain. A cursive ‘w’ that had been carved onto the small of his back over the course of forty-five minutes with a dull X-ACTO knife and lots of gleeful sounds from behind him.  
    He sighed and picked up his now-full takeout cup, icy cold to the touch. He pressed the sides of it to his now burning-marks, grateful for how the blood wouldn’t show up on the red paper. He picked up a box of bandages and a tube antibacterial solution, unscrewing the cap with his teeth and peeling the foil away, squeezing the gel over his new injuries. He set both the tube of gel and his frozen drink onto the counter lining the back wall, and set about to pressing his new bandages onto the cuts. Carlos knew they were shallow enough to not scar, but the faster they healed the less questions Evie and Mal would ask.  
    With his cuts now covered to his satisfaction, Carlos turned to his rapidly melting drink. He sucked down half of the cup at once, and clutched his head in pain as brain freeze crept from his temples and traveled down his spine, tingling a sharp pain at the nape of his neck.  
    “Brain freeze,” he whispered to himself, Evie and Mal having left him to his own devices as the giggles filled the empty store. It reminded him of the song from Heathers: the Musical, which Mal and Evie had forced him to attend six performances in a row. Evie had majored in fashion design, and had helped their community theatre with costumes over the summer. Carlos only took two years of college with them, having finished up most of his credits online or by doubling up his classes over the summer as well as during the school year. ‘Freeze Your Brain’ had been his favorite of all the songs, relating to JD for a moment. He and the character lost their common life stories quickly, though, once the characters started dying off left and right.  
    “I live for that sweet frozen rush,” he sang to himself quietly, letting the chorus take over his lungs and forgetting to be quiet quickly.  
    “Freeze your brain; suck on that straw, get lost in the pain. Happiness comes when everything numbs, who needs cocaine? Freeze your brain, freeze your brain.” Carlos paused, allowing the parts of the song he forgot to pass by and finished the song quickly. “Something, something, the sky's gonna hurt when it falls; so you better start building some walls. Freeze your brain; swim in the ice, get lost in the pain.Shut your eyes tight, till you vanish from sight, let nothing remain - freeze your brain, shatter your skull, fight pain with more pain. Forget who you are, unburden your load, forget in six weeks you'll be back on the road. When the voice in your head says you're better off dead, don't open a vein - just freeze your brain, freeze your brain, go on and freeze your brain…”  
    With his eyes closed, his hands wrapped around a cold slushie and leaning back against the wall of the corner store, Carlos almost forgot who he was and what he was doing. Once he got to his last word, he opened his eyes quickly, spinning towards the slushie machine with hope for a second.  
    “Try it.”  
    “I would, but I think you need the slushie more than I do,” an amused voice said, as the owner braced his hands on Carlos’s shoulders before he stumbled onto the floor. “I would ‘care for a hit’, though.”  
                                                                                                                                                                                          ___  
   
    Jay had only wandered into a corner store at around two-thirty in the morning to get out of the cold. He had every intention of grabbing a crappy cup of instant coffee, chugging the whole thing, and running the seven blocks at a dead sprint to his apartment building. But as he’d leaned onto the front counter, watching his sort-of friend Mal and her girlfriend, Evie, flirt and dance around each other as they all waited for coffee, his ears had perked up to the sound of someone singing. Jay supposed that the voice had been singing since he’d gotten there, but now as the end of the song was picking up, so was the volume of the last chorus reprise. And _holy shit,_ the guy singing was good. So good, that Jay thought a little piece of him had fallen in love the second his vibrato picked up.  
    Mal had snorted and given Evie a poke on the cheek. “Guess Carlos forgot that there might be other customers. Good thing it’s not like the last time he started up the show-tunes.”  
    “Who’s Carlos?” Jay had asked quickly, getting a strange look from Mal that quickly morphed into something between a smirk and understanding.  
    “He’s our friend. Comes in a lot during the graveyard shift to hang out, sometimes if we get enough of this packaged crap in him he’ll sing. I’d say he’s by the slushie machine, he’s singing ‘Freeze Your Brain’. I think,” she said, whirling onto Evie, “that this one is _your_ fault. Why did you make him see it _six_ times?”  
    “Hey, better than the _seven_ of you in Wicked!” Evie shot back, leaning back on her forearms with a devilish glint in her eyes.  
    “I killed that role and you know it.”  
    “You did, but there’s no excuse for all the duets I’ve had to hear since then. My ears will never hear high notes the same,” she said with fake-mournfulness, shaking her head slowly. Jay wandered away from his promise of crappy coffee to find this _Carlos_.  
    He wasn’t quite prepared, however, to find a hot guy around his age, only a couple inches shorter than him, with a shock of bleached white hair and worn navy blue pajama bottoms singing with perfect vibrato a line about suicide. Jay looked down at the arms of the boy quickly. _Whoa_. He was _maybe_ expecting cute guy. Cute guy with crazy hair, that was maybe a possibility. But a really _really_ good looking guy, covered with freckles and evident marks of both abuse and self harm? That was not what Jay thought would be out for him on his way back from his friend Ben’s place.  
    “Try it,” he said dramatically, spinning with practiced form and closed eyes towards the slushie machine. He opened his eyes to see Jay and let out a yelp, almost falling face-first onto the floor. Jay reached out on instinct and steadied the guy, lingering slightly before pulling his hands away from the guy’s (Carlos, he had to remind himself) shoulders.  
    “I would, but I think you need the slushie more than I do.” He watched as Carlos’s eyes widened even more, drawing his attention to the dark circles that surrounded dark brown irises, like chocolate lakes. “I would ‘care for a hit’, though.”  
    Carlos looked scared. Jay covered his obvious flirting with an awkward chuckle. “Hi? I’m Jay.” He held out his hand for a shake, and Carlos only hesitated a moment before clasping his hand and giving a firm shake.  
    “Carlos.”  
    Jay wasn’t expecting icy cold hands, barely skin, bone, and flexing tendons that left a tingle at his pulse points. He managed to cover his shock with another smile, but Carlos seemed to see through it and immediately apologized.  
    “I’m sorry, I was holding a slushie and-“  
    “Singing?” Jay cut in, liking how Carlos’s lips twitched into a near smirk, but flicked back quickly.  
    “I’m sorry you had to hear that, I must’ve not heard the bell when you came in and I thought it was just my friends and I and I just - I got carried away.” The boy shrank into himself a little bit, and only then did Jay notice the new box of Band-Aids on the counter behind him, the four fresh bandages that circled around Carlos’s thin forearms, and the tracks of tears that were only beginning to fade from the freckled face.  
    “Hey, what’s wrong?” Jay tried to ask softly, as the boy slumped backwards into the counter. When he only got silence and saw a fresh teardrop fall onto his shoe, he kneeled to look up into the hooded eyes of the smaller boy. He would have said shorter, but for all the muscle and thick leather jacket that covered Jay, Carlos only had a thin pair of pajama pants and an ill-fitting hoodie. “You can talk to me, I promise.”  
    “Shitty night.” The words came out quickly and quietly; had Jay not been so close he probably would have missed them. “Well,” Carlos said, lifting his head a little bit to give a bitter little laugh, “shitty life.”  
    “Can’t say I disagree,” Jay replied, leaning against the counter himself when Carlos made it obvious the kneeling was weird with just a raised eyebrow. “It seems like something’s really wrong.”  
    “Something’s always wrong,” Carlos said, motioning to the rest of the corner store with a grand sweep of his arm. “That’s why I come here.” Jay had to admit, he’d forgotten that they were at a 24-hour store at around 2:45 in the morning. He kind of preferred the idea of being in his own little world, with this slightly broken stranger with a beautiful voice and eyes like fondue.  
    “I’m sorry,” Jay offered, sounding feeble. He didn’t know what to say to this quiet stranger who spoke volumes in eight words.  
    Carlos looked up at him, a little confused. “Why are you apologizing to me? You haven’t done anything wrong - at least, I think.” He looked at Jay again, a little more wary but with a playful shine in his eyes that had been missing before. “You didn’t mug me ever, right?”  
    Jay raised his hands in surrender. “Can’t say I did. But I’m going to guess you can handle yourself in a dark alley. If anything, you’d mug me.”  
    Carlos let out a laugh that died quickly in the empty aisles. “Me, mug you? Yeah, the skinny guy in pajamas can definitely take on someone with probably fifty pounds of muscle on him and a badass leather jacket. Absolutely, no doubt.” Jay saw Carlos’s eyes flicker to the writing that was on the shirt underneath, but flick away just as fast.  
    Jay just unzipped the jacket silently, answering the unasked question. He saw Carlos’s mouth curl up into a smile, a real one that lasted more than two milliseconds, at reading the big THE FUTURE IS FEMALE that was tight to his chest. “I bought it, but Mal got to pick the color.” They both looked down at the neon pink shirt again, and each let out a little snicker of their own. Jay felt his nervousness surge back into his bloodstream when he saw Carlos’s eyes roving over chest once more. “You look cold,” he said, shrugging the jacket off quickly and draping around the skinny boy.  
    Carlos looked about as awkward as Jay felt. “Thanks,” he almost whispered, sliding his arms into the too-big jacket and watching his hands fumble in the long sleeves. “Won’t you get cold?”  
    “Nah,” Jay said, making origami cranes out of the paper that had once sealed around Band-Aids. “Like you said, I’ve got the muscle.”  
    “Yeah,” Carlos said, looking down again. He lifted his head though, with eyes that seemed bright and completely different from the dull shine that had closed them off when Jay had first seen the crying boy. “This is weird and if you say no I totally get it, but, would you want to come back to my apartment with me? I make better coffee than Mal and Evie.” His hopeful expression flickered back into a guarded look, a change so fast that Jay wouldn’t have had noticed unless he’d been staring into Carlos’s eyes.  
    Which he had been.  
    “Yeah,” he said, draping an arm around Carlos and liking how Carlos automatically leaned into him a bit. “Let’s get out of here. It won’t take much to impress me - Mal makes _really shitty_ coffee.”

**Author's Note:**

> WOW. I didn't predict the amazing response I got to Lookin' Like That (With Your New Clothes) but thank you all so so much!!! If you haven't read any more of Fighters/Lovers, you don't have to to read this fic (though I'd love if you did!). Chapter Two will be coming soon, and comments/feedback is greatly appreciated!!!
> 
> The song 'Freeze Your Brain' is from Heathers: the Musical, and one of my absolute favorite songs of all time. I highly recommend listening to it to understand a little bit more why Carlos is singing it, and also because it's amazing!


End file.
